


The Past Is The Past

by afteriwake



Series: Stuff Of Improbable Legends [29]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Eureka (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Carrying, Conversations, F/M, Friendship, Inspired by Roleplay/Roleplay Adaptation, Late Night Conversations, Male-Female Friendship, Moved On, One-Sided Attraction, Past Zane Donovan/Jo Lupo, Pre-Relationship, Roleplay Logs, Skye | Daisy Johnson Is Fictional, Zane Is Fictional, Zane Likes Skye | Daisy Johnson, Zane's Past, deep discussions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 16:42:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9394097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: While working to get things settled legally into New Orleans proper, Daisy has a surprising conversation with Zane about his life prior to his universe-hopping, his former love and his take on having his life out for the world to see.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sideofrawr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sideofrawr/gifts).



> So this fic is for **sideofrawr** , who claimed the Eureka/Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fandom as one of my fandoms towards my 1,250th fic on AO3. I was originally going to do this for another fic series, but as they are breaking up in that game I decided to do it for this AU instead. The prompt I got was “You are ridiculously comfortable…” from [this list](http://penaltywaltz.tumblr.com/post/142534142233/random-sentence-starters).

She hated to admit it, but her neck was starting to hurt. She had the worst posture when she was hard at work, and with the sudden appearance of a second Youth Center and a three-building apartment complex thanks to Rose’s wish, there was a ton of work to do between her and Zane. She started rubbing the back of her neck and rolling her head around, trying to get the soreness away.

“You need a break, Tech Goddess,” Zane said without looking up from his own computer.

“How do you even do that?” Daisy asked, looking over at him.

“What, the working for hours on end without moving an inch or the knowing you need a break thing?” he asked, his mouth quirking up in a grin.

“Both, smartass,” she replied, moving her laptop aside and coming over to see what he was working on. It looked like fake IDs for some of the newer arrivals.

“You’re a freelance hacker and, let’s be real, Coulson’s a nice boss. You haven’t had the kind of background I have,” he said. “There’s been nights I’ve had to pull all nighters and get maybe four hours sleep because if I keep my eyes off an experiment too long, the world goes up in flames because some idiot thinks it’ll be funny to jack up my experiment. I mean, apparently my first day in Eureka, I had to deal with the recreation of the big bang in the other universe while most of the people in town became children.”

She tilted her head. “You never really talk about Eureka,” she said.

“More fun to watch it, for the most part,” he said with a slight shrug. “I mean, the parts of the story they don’t show are kind of boring, all the stuff with actually _building_ the stuff to save the day, but overall the series is pretty fun.”

After a moment she sat on the edge of his desk, nudging his laptop slightly, and then he looked up. “It doesn’t bother you? Knowing you’re fictional? Knowing anyone can watch your series and know everything about you?”

He shook his head. “It probably helps my series is finished. There’s a whole life left for me to live in Eureka no one knows jack about, unless someone shows up from the future and tells me. And my series isn’t like yours. Yeah, bad stuff happens. We lost people. We had our entire lives changed. But it’s not a kind of...” He groped for the words to describe what her life was like back home.”

“Crapfest?” she said with a wry smile.

“Yeah. Most of us got happy endings. I mean, Holly died, but we got her back in a body, and in the end, she and Fargo got back together and went off to do science together. Henry managed to get Beverly to get Grace out of jail and then he got to run GD when Grant bought it. Allison and Carter are staying in Eureka and Allison’s having their first kid together. And then...” He trailed off.

“You got a happy ending?” she said quietly.

“Should have,” he replied. “My girlfriend proposed to me. Mirrored the proposal I gave to her before she and the others changed history, which mirrored our first real encounter in the old universe. I said yes, by the way.”

Daisy was quiet at that. She knew he’d been serious with someone at some point; he’d seen pictures of him and a dark haired woman in the house, but he didn’t realize it had been _that_ serious. “What was her name?”

“Josefina Lupo,” he said, a soft smile settling on his lips. “She went by Jo, though. There were very few people in the world allowed to call her anything other than Jo. I was lucky I got away with Jo-Jo.” He tapped in a few keys on his laptop and a picture came up of him and the woman. “Ex-Army Ranger, loved her guns, former Catholic, current Presbyterian, only girl in a family of boys, her dad kinda liked me but her brothers hated me until I kicked their asses at football, had this gorgeous yellow dress she’d wear sometimes when she thought I was working too hard and deserved surprise because otherwise she was always in pantsuits. Loved me even when I was a fuck-up, except I didn’t know why.” He looked up at Daisy. “Universe changing stuff. It got weird when I figured it out, but...we worked it out.”

Daisy nodded. “And you still love her?”

“I’m always going to love her,” he said, tracing her face as he looked back at the picture, his smile becoming sad. “But am I _in_ love with her? No, not anymore. Too many years, too many universes, too many other people I’ve met and cared about.”

Daisy felt a sort of relief at that statement. She leaned over and, without thinking, kissed the top of his head. “Good. Don’t be like me.”

Zane grinned slightly. “You’re not so bad, you know. You aren’t moping, at least. You’re a part of the community, you socialize, you have friends.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly Miss Sociability in your hacker cave, now am I?” she asked.

“Okay, that’s it,” he said, moving his chair away. “We’re doing a marathon. I’m going to embarrass myself and we’re going to watch my show from my introductory episode on and we’ll rope Cami into it and anyone else who wants to join in and you guys can laugh at my god awful spiked hair and the _really_ bad beginning to my relationship with Jo-Jo. If I can laugh at it, you can too.” He didn’t even hesitate before picking her up off his desk in both arms and carrying her towards the stairs.

“You know, you are ridiculously comfortable…” Daisy said with a laugh.

“Then you and Cami can fight over who uses me for a human pillow,” he said with a grin as he headed up the stairs. She snuggled against him, pleased for at least a little bit for the distraction. Distraction was good, and it was even better if it was at his expense and not hers.


End file.
